Wintsch occupies that hinterland between jazz improvisation and new
music, a place becoming more populated these days but which hasn't
lost its charm. This recording is the result of a pretty interesting
methodology. Along with Oester and Hemingway, Wintsch had done considerable
amounts of composing and touring with a trio in mind. The music opens
as a sort of knotty, hermetic piano trioyou might think of Howard
Riley, or of Simon Nabatovbut winds its way slowly into a kind
of fantasy for piano and strings.

Wintsch's experience in film music has served him well. Rather than
fall prey to the temptations of the obvious (which so often hamstrings
music that aspires to narrative), he uses his flair for the dramatic
and his poetic sensibility to craft very alluring, if ambiguous musical
scenes. There's certainly plenty of freewheeling improvisationOester
seems particularly keyed into the spaces, the organic rhythms of this
music, and Hemingway is as fantastic as everbut there's also
the lumpen drive of rock, the austerity of new music (both with and
without the strings), and various folk forms.

On many pieces, like "Painter Mikailov", Wintsch sets up deceptively
simple shapes and grooves over which the string players twist and
wind in gentle counterpoint. The classically trained Saudan and Schwab
are very effective here. But on the Bartok-like "Edelweiss Edema",
it's Hemingway and Wintsch who shine, using a dizzying array of textural
devices to evoke melancholy. Oester, too, proves his mettle in this
area on the super-silent "Belly of Nothingness", where he pizzes up
high amidst ghost notes from nowhere. But the group also ventures
into grittier territory. The title track could almost be industrial
music at the outset, with the strings floating over a clanking noise,
but it veers suddenly into hard funk as Wintsch hits the Rhodes. Even
a seemingly chamber-ish piece like "Quixotic" finds its way into a
great movie chase-theme thing before ceding to the final piece, with
its repetitive, minimalist tones.

In both his playing and writing, Wintsch admirably combines various
jazz feels with contemporary classical techniques and sensibilities.
The result is a rewarding group recording, one marked by a directness
that carries over into its many moods and evocations.